ASPIRING TO EMULATE BUDÉ
BUDÉ, Guillaume.
G. Budaei … Epistolarum latinarum lib. V. Annotationibusq[ue] adiectis in singulas fere epistolas. Graecarum item lib. I. Basilii item Magni epistola de vita in solitudine agenda, per Budaeum latina facta.
[Paris,] Jodocus Badius, February 1531.
Folio, ff. [viii], ‘LII’ [recte CXLII], ‘20’ [recte 25], [1, blank]; title within woodcut border with large woodcut printer’s device, criblé initials; title laid down on gauze with marginal losses (barely touching border in one place), dampstaining throughout, edges slightly browned and brittle with occasional chips and tears, a few old marginal tape repairs; bound in twentieth-century brown morocco-backed boards with brown cloth sides, spine lettered directly in gilt, preserving an older front flyleaf; joints and spine bands rubbed; eighteenth-century ownership inscription ‘J. Jortin’ on title (see below), and to front flyleaf ‘Ex libris G.K.W.’ with note dated 30 April 1825, ink stamp of the ‘Stinnecke Maryland Episcopal Library 1879’ to front flyleaf and title, bookplate and labels of ‘St Mark’s Library the General Theological Seminary Chelsea Square New York’ to front flyleaf; annotations in an elegant sixteenth-century hand in brown and pale red ink to c. 300 pp.
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G. Budaei … Epistolarum latinarum lib. V. Annotationibusq[ue] adiectis in singulas fere epistolas. Graecarum item lib. I. Basilii item Magni epistola de vita in solitudine agenda, per Budaeum latina facta.
Handsome Badius edition of the Latin and Greek letters of the great French humanist Guillaume Budé (1467–1540), edited with commentary by his pupil Jacques Toussain, here with profuse annotations by a contemporary French student to almost every page.
‘A scholar of vast erudition’, Budé ‘was the most eminent French humanist of his generation and was responsible in 1530 for persuading the king to appoint the royal readers in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin who formed the nucleus of the future Collège de France. Among his principal works are a commentary on the Pandects (1508) and a treatise on ancient coinage (De asse, 1514), both of which reveal the breadth of his learning, his pioneering skills as archaeologist and philologist, and his insistence on returning to the original texts and documents. His Commentarii linguae graecae (1529) and his translations of Plutarch firmly placed Hellenism on the agenda of Renaissance scholarship’ (New Oxford Companion to Literature in French). The letters collected here draw upon earlier editions of the 1520s, but new material is also included. The addressees represent a remarkable assemblage of eminent humanists, including Erasmus, Thomas Linacre, Pietro Bembo, Jean Salmon Macrin, Thomas More, Andrea Alciato, François Rabelais, Cuthbert Tunstall, and Janus Lascaris.
The annotations in this copy – in Latin, Greek, and occasional French – display an extraordinary engagement with Budé’s learned correspondence: they must surely be the work of a student growing their knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages and seeking to emulate Budé’s epistolary style.
The marginalia to the Latin letters essentially provide definitions of words and phrases employed in Budé’s text: e.g. praetorium is defined as ‘locus in quo praetor jus dicit, bailliage, item domus regia’; θεμις as ‘ius, fas’; Momus as ‘deus matre quidem nocte ac patre somno natus’; proletarius as ‘a prole dictus est, proletarii dicti sunt qui in plebe Romana pauperrimi erant’; tessera as ‘signum bellicum, le mot du guet, une taille’; φιλοκαλια as ‘elegantiae studium, honesti amor’; ευαγγελιον as ‘bonum faustumque nuntium’; δημαγωγια as ‘populi ductus et regimen’; Aegeria as ‘nympha que colebatur in Aricino lacu uxor Numae’; and so on.
The Greek letters at the end have interlinear Latin renderings of words and phrases as well as marginal definitions of Greek vocabulary, while Budé’s Latin translation of Basil the Great’s letter to Gregory of Nazianzus has interlinear Greek equivalents, displaying both a close linguistic analysis and a keen interest in the act of translation between the classical languages. Our annotator has created a keyword index at the end, arranged in folio order, directing him to his own notes on, for example, Emblema, Magus, Torpor animi, etc.
Provenance:
1. John Jortin (1698–1770), fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, ecclesiastical historian and literary critic. While at Cambridge he was a noted Greek and Latin scholar.
2. William Rollinson Whittingham (1805–1879), Bishop of Maryland. His note here was written in 1825, the year of his graduation from the General Theological Seminary in New York, where he later served as both librarian and professor. His important theological library became the core of the Maryland Episcopal Library, later transferred to the General Theological Seminary.
BP16 106593; USTC 203459; Adams B 3132; Renouard, Josse Badius Ascensius, II, p. 237.
